Russian-Boiled Wonderland: Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki is enchanting Russian readers with his unique brand of fiction

NO individual before ever conquered such a enormous country so quickly, so bloodlessly and in similar an elegant way. Murakami Haruki won this battle with his hands down, and the army of Russian readers relentless in love with the man--long before the first published translation of his work hit their bookstores. The spooky Japanese-born alien was implanted into the Russian brain via the Internet.

In 1994 I was living in Niigata. My dream was to discover a moderately cold Japanese writer and to introduce him to the folk at place of abode in my own tongue, I worn out many evenings digging ...